Read Turning Forty for Free Online

she said, grabbing hold of me. The friends she had been waiting for would be leaving the disco any minute and I had to do something. Just as I was about to take action she planted a kiss full on my lips and in a few moments we were kissing so intensely that I could still taste her mouth (a heady concoction of illicit alcohol, cigarettes and spearmint chewing gum) long after we had parted.
    And that night a precedent was set: from here on in we were each other’s consolation prize, each other’s back-up plan, the original friends with benefits long before being a friend with benefits was even a thing. And although it was hardly the most romantic of beginnings our developing friendship enabled us to continue this arrangement through our A levels, our degrees and beyond. But somewhere around our mid-twenties life happened, and jobs happened, and the opportunities for friendship, let alone our temporary couplings, seemed to all but disappear until eventually I forgot about the people who used to mean the world to me and instead concentrated on the people who were right by my side.
    Consigning that part of my life to the shoebox of my youth along with much else that, while enjoyable, was inherently bad for me, as I approached thirty I tried to focus my energies on activities that were the complete opposite. Good food, healthy relationships, things that would improve my life. But then as I’ve already remarked, at the grand old age of twenty-nine I split up with my American girlfriend and found myself briefly back in Birmingham. And that ‘hazy warmth of nostalgia’ I mentioned earlier and which I mistook for something more than it was, was of course the one, the only, Ginny Pascoe.
     
    The last time I saw Ginny in the flesh had been at my own wedding. She’d been single at the time but seemed really happy in herself and when she’d kissed me on the cheek that day and wished me well I saw a look in her eye as if to say: ‘It’s OK that this is the end of our story. I think we’ve both got what we needed.’ It was oddly life-affirming, like attending the funeral of an old man who everyone knew had lived a full and love-filled life.
    But if all that was true, why after six years without a single word between us had I returned home from a run unable to think about anything or anyone other than Ginny? I’ve tried long and hard to come up with a theory. I’ve considered everything from the possibility that my personality’s gone haywire perhaps due to an undiagnosed mini-stroke on the day of my fake heart attack right through to the idea that I am just too damn lazy to find someone new to fall in love with. The conclusion I’ve come to however is this: the night that Ginny and I first kissed remains one of the happiest of my life. And facing the four-oh as I am without a wife, job, or indeed a home, right now I’d give anything, absolutely anything, to be that happy again.

7
    ‘So it’s been like this for what? Days? Weeks?’
    I look down at the floor like a wayward schoolboy who’s been caught up to no good. My mum sounds angry and disappointed at the same time, which I’ll admit wasn’t the response I had been hoping for. No one on this earth can make me feel guilty quite like she does.
    ‘More like months,’ I confess.
    ‘So when we had that get-together at Edward’s in the summer and you said Lauren was working you were what, lying?’
    I feel myself growing smaller as I nod. Soon I’ll be invisible to the naked eye.
    ‘I thought it was for the best.’
    ‘So where have you been living all this time?’
    ‘In the house.’
    ‘And where has she been living?’
    A raised eyebrow says it all.
    ‘You carried on living together?’
    There’s hope in her voice and although a lifetime admirer of my mother’s propensity for hopeless optimism, I find this only makes things harder. ‘There’s no chance of us getting back together, Mum,’ I say, dashing her hopes. ‘We carried on living together because